Watch Out Jimmy Choo, Luxury Shoes Are Going Vegan

It’s no secret that vegan food products are a massive growth market. Even the US’s largest meat producer is jumping on the plant-based protein bandwagon. But the food industry isn’t the only area in which animal-free items are becoming in vogue. According to global research firm J. Walter Thompson Intelligence’s latest The Future 100 report, vegan fashion will be a major trend for 2018, particularly in the luxury sector.

This prediction has weight considering some of the major innovations that have come about over the past three years, including alternatives to leather made from pineapple waste, apple peels, mushrooms, kombucha and wine. In July this year British designer Stella McCartney partnered with Bolt Threads, a San Francisco-based biotech firm that has produced a vegan-friendly silk using yeast. In September Modern Meadow launched what it says is the first biofabricated leather brand, Zoa, which uses fermented yeast to grow collagen. It claims the tech, which is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit ‘Items: Is Fashion Modern?’ in New York until January 28, 2018, is able to create durable and more eco-friendly alternatives to a variety of animal skins, without harming animals.

While major luxury shoe brands, with the exception of McCartney, have been slow in embracing animal-free materials, vegan entrepreneurs have stepped in to fill the void and create a burgeoning market, demonstrating that ‘vegan’ and ‘sustainable’ doesn’t mean boring, ugly, canvas tennis shoes or cheap PVC sandals.

Rebecca Mink from Los Angeles is a pioneer in this field. She founded Mink Shoes 17 years ago while working as a celebrity wardrobe stylist. As an animal lover, she found herself in a quandary when it came to shoes. “I was spending up to $10,000 a month for high-end leather shoes for celebrities for their appearances on the red carpet,” she says. “I had no other options, so I decided to make a vegan shoe of the same quality as Prada, Gucci and Jimmy Choo.”

The problem was, as she told FORBES magazine back in 2007, none of the 16 factories she visited in Italy, which manufacture shoes for the majority of luxury brands, wanted to work with her. Eventually one factory agreed to take on the task of creating an upmarket vegan shoe, which resulted in a slew of challenges. “There are up to 20 components for each shoe and they all had to be vegan,” Mink explains. “In the beginning some of the fabrics were stretching out so we had to find ways to line them so they wouldn’t become a size bigger. We also had to put our shoes in the freezer to avoid the moulding machines melting the non-leather fabrics.”

Mink Shoes

Mink Shoes being made in a factory just outside Florence, Italy, which also makes shoes for Jimmy Choo, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Chanel and Christian Louboutin.

Mink also had to create her own animal-free glue. “You should have seen the factory owner’s face when I said I couldn’t use their glue after they finally accepted me!” she laughs, although they soon became impressed after her rubber-based glue outperformed the standard solvents.